I've come up with what I feel is a rather unique approach to the teleportarium/murder servitor strategy. I left the teleportarium alone and instead changed the murder servitors. I made it so each time the murder servitors are used, they have to be...umm... "prepped" Basically in order to get them going, they need a taste of human blood. This causes 1 loss to crew and 1d5 loss to morale each time their used. I haven't playtested this yet for balance, but I imagine it would make the players rethink about using the pair in every single encounter at every moment. What do you think?

That's absurd. 1% of the crew represents ~240 men on a raider. That's not just a "taste" of blood for servitors which operate in groups of "a mere dozen" on hit & run raids.

Further, why are you trying to penalizing the players for using the component's only real function? Would you make them suffer casualties and morale loss for using their ship's guns? If you really think they're getting too much mileage out of the servitors, have them make upkeep rolls for them after use now and then.

Honestly, the combination isn't unbalanced unless you let your players choose to take Archaotech at the ship generation stage instead of having it as a fortunate outcome to the Past Histories roll. Otherwise the PC's will have to earn it, and more power to them if they do

Tullio said:

The murder servitors + Teleportarium combo is a bit overpowered.

Our implementation of balance is to limit the amount of hit and run attacks that can be conducted with a single teleportarium. We did a combat once with just the rules as written, and let's just say that being able to launch consecutive hit and run attacks will pretty much destroy an enemy NPC vessel in just one strategic turn. I mean, even the Senechal of the group (who only had Command as a basic skill) was able to launch a successful H&R after the Rogue Trader had already went over and wreaked havoc aboard the enemy ship.

The Seneschal didn't have to fly a boarding craft since they both used the teleportarium, and the combined bonuses to Command from the murder servitors and the Teleportarium made his modest skill in Command pretty nasty. He has a Fellowship of 50, half that would be 25 due to Command only being a basic skill, the Murder Servitors give an additional +20, and the Teleportarium another +20, for a total of 65 to Command, and the Command test to H&R is done at Ordinary level (+10) so that was 1d100 against 75, which is pretty darn awesome for someone who normally should only have a skillvalue of 25 to that particular skill. Especially compared to a poor "mook" NPC vessel where the crew is highly unlikely to be particularly good at anything.

Our solution is to simply say that a teleportarium can only be used once per strategic turn (high power consumption to teleport matter such long distances, and the technology is barely understood even among the most elite ranking Techpriests etc. etc.). That way it won't conflict with how Murder Servitors function (the component implies that you will have "enough" servitors, regardless of how many units you lose during certain H&R attacks and such), and it won't try to use houseruling to prevent the players from preforming several H&R's during a single strategic turn. It will only prohibit them from abusing the teleportarium to an unreasonable degree.

That certainly made the component a lot more balanced. It's still a good combo, but not overpowered.

Am I correct in thinking that range of teleportarium is 5 VU? If you have a raider armed with sunspear (range 9 VU) you can keep your distance and keep trying to inflict some damage to PCs and your superior maneuverability, probably, would keep you in the clear. It is still powerful combo. My players have totally wrecked two wolfpack raiders with their dauntless almost only with teleportarium and hit and run tactic because I was stupid and got close. Poor bastards barely escaped with their lives.

Of course this is my conjecture and I am too lazy to check in the rulebook right now.

Cat that Walked by Himself said:

Yeah you can only do H&R attacks on ships 5 VU's away at most. But the thing is, the range rarely proves to be an issue since the PC's can simply choose to use their manouvre action first and gun their engines towards the enemy vessel and then do the H&R, and there's nothing the enemy vessel can do to respond to that (you can't roll dodge tests for starships after all).

So you could say that an H&R attack has a range of whatever speed the vessel can bring out of the engines plus 5 VU's. In most cases, this range is going to be longer than most weapon battery and lance weapon ranges.

Varnias Tybalt said:

That brings to mind quite an effective limiter on the effectiveness of the Teleportarium, then - in BFG, the common source of Hit-and-Run attacks is Assault Boats, which have a speed of 30cm and being Ordnance, ignore shields... by comparison, a Teleport Attack (something every ship save for Tau and Tyranid ones can perform) can only be performed against a ship 10cm away that is currently shield-less.

Limiting the Teleportarium to 2VU range (approximately a third, rounding up, of the normal H&R range), and only allowing it to attack ships which either have no shields (the component is depowered, damaged or destroyed) or whose shields have been overloaded already that turn, would reflect that nicely...

Tullio said:

Very true. Note that starting with archeotech should also stick the players with a massive -20 to repair tests, which is an excellent balancing factor. Getting a teleportarium without being cursed with that penalty should only happen during play, and only after some real effort - and even then I'd apply the repair penalty to the component itself if it gets damaged. Broken archeotech should be a royal pain to fix, maybe even requiring upkeep rolls if it gets busted regularly.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Except that void shields in this game instantly regenerates after each hit or salvo, which means that shields will pretty much always be powered and make the teleportarium completely redundant. Unless you plan to revamp the entire system of how void shields function in this game of course, but to me that seems to be too much of a hassle.

I think the "one use per strategic turn" for each teleportarium works out quite nicely. A teleportarium is an archaeotech component after all, so it should be better than good. And alone it is good and far from overpowered. It's just when you bring in murder servitors into the equation when it starts to get insanely good. And if you use the RAW where you can feasibly launch consecutive H&R's then it becomes overpowered.

Insanely good I have no problem with. The players should be rewarded for thinking smart in the choice of starship components. Overpowered however is a completely different story.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Hardly that difficult. Rather obviously, you could simply houserule that you can only teleport onto a ship that's had its shield(s) overloaded by fire during the current ship's turn. You can sequence a ship's actions however you want, so just fire the guns first, then 'port over. Models the "not through shields" thing fine, and while it does theoretically mean that each ship with a teleportarium has to knock down shields on its own, that's not a real problem - how many RT fights are going to feature multiple teleport-capable ships?

Argoden said:

Actually, in today's session me and the rest of my group engaged with a Rogue Trader vessel that had a teleportarium. The thing was that we had recieved intel of this component before we engaged them, and we also had the on them because they didn't know we were gunning for them. So naturally our first Hit and Run attack aimed straight for their teleportarium, just to insure that they don't use the same tactic against us in retaliation.

It was quite a funny battle really. Both our vessels translated into realspace near footfall, and they had the intention of docking at footfall as fast as possible in order tio unload some important cargo that we needed to steal.

The thing is, most of the players were worried that if we started shooting at them with our guns, every Rogue Trader currently docked at footfall might consider us to engage in piracy and might try to intercept. So we basically just preformed a bunch of hit and run attacks with the teleportarium so that no outside onlookers would ever actually be able to see that the two ships were locked in combat.

Of course we didn't intend to destroy the other vessel. We just sabotaged their teleportarium, and the next turn we pinpointed where they kept the particular cargo we were supposed to steal (the GM decided that the Senechal's Active Augury with a success of 7 degrees was enough to pinpoint that).

Imagine that, a "proper" starship battle without a single gun fired. Ironic to say the least.

Eh, it's like I said in my review of the game: it's an overpowered combo (my party did actually roll for archeotech). In theory, the correct counter is the tenebro maze, however, it's not exactly something one would commonly put on every starship, and if it does start showing up on every ship, the players ARE going to notice.

The -20 check isn't hard to get around (though not as easy as the xenotech one) with a repair build explorator and the right other components.

The main problem with them is that you can what you're disabling. (Engines/manuvering thrusters are popular targets) since once the opposing ship is dead in the water, well...

BaronIveagh said:

Hence why you only put it on the special NPC ships that are intended to fight in 1 on 1 space battles with the players, rather than fitting exactly every single mook vessel with it.

Mook vessels can outweigh their weak stats by sheer numbers instead. It should add enough variety and provide adequate challenge to the battles.

Just design different NPC vessels with this combo in mind instead of overlooking it. That's what im gonna do.

BaronIveagh said:

Tenebro-mazes are common as dirt IME. The ability to choose to have an incoming crit land on your observation dome or trophy room rather than the gun decks or engines is worth the cost alone, and the bonus to boarding defense is just gravy.

And a -20 mod to repair checks is two MoS, which translates to two extra turns of repair time on every component. Unless you're regularly rolling 6+ degrees of success, it's not something to laugh at.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Not quite. When a ship takes down a target's shields, those shields stay down until the end of the attacking ship's turn, and then reset for the next attacker's turn - so if you fire one or more of your macrobatteries to strip the shields, you can then fire your lances and any other remaining weapons without the shields interfering that turn. What you can't do is try and take down the shields for another ship acting later that turn - once your turn has ended, the shields you downed will come back up again.

What restricting the Teleportarium to targeting shieldless ships only would do is force you to close, attack and strip the shields of your target each turn you intend to teleport boarders over.

Not quite. When a ship takes down a target's shields, those shields stay down until the end of the attacking ship's turn, and then reset for the next attacker's turn - so if you fire one or more of your macrobatteries to strip the shields, you can then fire your lances and any other remaining weapons without the shields interfering that turn. What you can't do is try and take down the shields for another ship acting later that turn - once your turn has ended, the shields you downed will come back up again.

Somehow, I feel there will be a component in the ships book that will allow multiple ships to synchronize their fire enough to benefit from the other ship's fire. A bridge, probably.

Cifer said:

Probably, otherwise flying in a squadron with other ships would be pretty useless. Some people might argue that players probably won't have more than one ship so they can't fly in a squadron anyway, but I can tell you that after our third scenario we have acquired a fleet.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

just to report. i did just that for our latest session and it went perfectly. still really powerful but not a deal-breaker.

Component? Possibly. I half expect it to be a skill. Squadron Leader . Usually difficult getting all those things operating together, but if you're competent enough...

Could be a component too though. Hmmm.

On Murder Servitors and Teleportariu ms

I've not used 'em yet. My expectation is to have high upkeep on the Murder Servitors and some severe crew/morale damage on repeated/prolonged/untrained Teleporter use. Taking things like Salamander as an example (and IMO this is reasonable as it's a **** good book which does things in a fairly sensible way!), one begins to expect most folks teleported will be suffering D10 wounds and a fair amount of bleeding just because they teleported , let alone anything else.

With Murder Servitors, my main misgiving is that there are so many lesser things one would've expected in their place. Shark Assault Boats, for one. Boarding boats. Lots of lesser stuff. Developing 'Murder Servitors' seems like a final point which players should've thought up themselves; that it's a choice in the book just feels a bit obvious. I mean: Where's "Teleport Nuke" (if you'll pardon the flippant example)?

Furthermore, I think it could be the naming too. Folks familiar with stuff in 40k aren't used to Servitors being so **** useful.

EDIT: Also, yes, I don't think teleporter beams should be nipping through shields. Slow stuff goes through shields. TP signalling (scans, pinpointing and so forth) shouldn't. Of course, it can be argued otherwise, but it's also the obvious convention from BFG which could help matters a little.

One of my players has uttered the line "If I had a teleporter, I'd send over a bomb."

Anyway, here's my suggestion on the teleportarium.

Being transported through the Warp to arrive at your destination is an imperfect science, made all the harder by the fact that next to nothing is known about how these ancient devices work. Those capable of manipulating the Warp can help direct it.

A character operating the Teleportarium may make a Psyniscience check. Sucess indicates that the target has arrived relatively safely, with degrees of success or failure used to judge how far off target the teleported character lands. Sending a character to a teleport homer, or retrieving a group with one, gives +20 on this check.

Even at the best of times, a teleportation is dangerous. If the psyniscience check was sucessful, the subject takes 1d5 damage, -1 for every degree of success. A failed teleport causes 2d5 damage, +1 for every degree of failure. This damage ignores armour.

Overall, a lot less dangerous than piloting the shuttle, but not without it's issues. A risk of light injury makes them think twice about popping back and forth every turn, and as long as nothing serious happens they'll be fixed up with Medicae pretty quickly.

St. Jimmy said:

And what would that gain them in the long run?

What do they have to "win" by obliterating the opposing vessel entirely? Sure if they were space marines tasked at destroying their opponent utterly, then that might have been a viable tactic. But they are supposed to be playing Explorers in a Rogue Traders most trusted group of associates.

So if your player want to teleport over a bomb, then fine, let him. Either the bomb won't work (after all, starships in the 41st millenium are presented as being horrendously difficult to destroy utterly, even when their shields are down and the vessel is crippled, there's no guarantee that "sending over a nuke" would actually destroy it in the expected manner), or the bomb will work, pulvirizing the enemy vessel. And just as that player thinks he's been smart and feel exceptionally pleased with himself, you can tell them of just how many achievement points that went lost because a certain someone decided that it would be a "very good idea" to reduce the enemy vessel to it's constituent atoms, rather than engaging it in the traditional manner, cripple it and then salvage the wreck, either to repair it and use it as a new ship in the Rogue Trader's fleet, or to get spare parts and acquire certain components from the wreck and install them on the home vessel.

If you want to be extra mean, tell them of how many valuable xenotech and archaeotech components that were lost because of their cheesy tactics, that could have been gained if they had just used a little more finesse in defeating the enemy vessel rather than just blowing it all up.

It stands to reason that a Rogue Trader would want to find a way to gain something during a hostile confrontation. If they just arbitrarily send over nukes with a teleportarium against each enemy vessel they run into, then all they are really doing is wasting ammo and time. This could very well hurt their profit factor because after each confrontation they are always empty handed because there's nothing left to loot.

Aside from that, there's the whole detonation thing to consider. Suppose that the PC's intend to detonate the bomb by remote. That means that they have to use vox signals, something that can be prevented by a single "Jam communications" action by the NPC vessel (I mean if an armed nuclear bomb suddenly materialized out of hin air aboard your vessel, but has no countdown. What would you do?). And if they want to avoid that, they would have to set the bomb to a timer, something that could be very temperamental when used with a teleportarium (who's to say that the involved time distortion doesn't just detonate the bomb before it has even materialized aboard the target vessel? After all, not even the Mechanicus know the exact specifics of how a teleportarium works, or what side effects it can have).

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why sending over a bomb would be a bad idea. As a last resort when being stacked against overwhelming odds perhaps (like when you are suddenly assaulted by a Necron Cairn class Tombship or some other nigh invulnerable enemy vessel), but doing it all the time at every situation would be a bad idea.

If you let the players know this, im sure they would reconsider.

St. Jimmy said:

Just a note: Teleportariums don't transport matter through the warp. Warp travel is a different "science"

Teleportariums (as per their description) work more like they do in Star Trek (albeit in a more primitive and considerably less understood manner), by splitting the cargo/travellers down into their constituent particles and assemble them almos instantly a set distance away. At least according to the most recent fluff.

(Eldar Warp Spiders do however make short leaps through the warp, but that's eldar tech)

So you can't use it against shields, you can't use it without damage, you need a Psy person to divine a way, probably tech-use to, and now when they have an idea to get around some of those issues, just dropping an ordinance on them, you look to punish them further? I'm confused here, I thought we wanted our players to come up with work arounds, keep us as DMs on our toes. Seems like it's, "Oh that's a neat idea, let me punish you for it." I think the correct response is with all these removal of abilities of the Teleporter is simple, don't allow it if you don't like it. Because you seem to be rendering it so useless that why would I waste the ship space or single Archeotech Option on it if you attach all these strings to it. Is it powerful? Certainly is, but it's archeotech, and rare stuff at that, so I don't see why the players simply can't start with it or use Acquisition to obtain it. Let it be a cool trump card at the end of a nasty endeavor. Don't kill it because the PCs are using the item you let them have to its full capacity. And if you are going to let them have it and say, "if it's in the book it's acquirable," then fine, the rest of the Expanse has Rogue Traders as well who can acquire it just as easily, anything the PCs can get and do the NPCs can do more times because there are more NPCs than PCs out there. You don't need to crush their ideas because it's poweful, just realize anything they can do, you can do better, so they need to be careful what can of worms they open up.

Dyckman86 said:

Not sure here so I have to ask: is his directed at what I said?

Just to clarify I think I should say that I don't want to invoke penalties along the lines of forcing the players to take down the enemy vessels shields or having to use a psy person or some of the other overly complicated ideas that have been presented so far.

For me it's quite enough to simply limit the use of the teleportarium to once per strategic turn without any additional penalties. That still makes it good, but not overpowered.

My previous post about the bomb was more of an argument to why the players most likely wouldn't have good reason to abuse the component by sending over armed nukes every time they are in starship combat, because they would have little to gain from doing so.

Personally I find all these additiona penalizing prerequisites of having to take down shields and using psychic abilities to be completely unecessary.

One use of the teleportarium per strategic turn seems balanced enough, and also a very simple solution.

Taking the shields down is a good option in my opinion. I was also thinking about what someone said earlier about characters just gunning the engines to get in range to teleport. Would it be too harsh to reduce the bonus for the Teleportarium based on the relative speeds of the craft? From my understanding, using the Teleportarium is tough between two relatively stationary targets (planet - orbiting ship). This would force the characters to choose between maneuvering close to the target and getting their full bonus or tossing a hail mary. Maybe for each point difference between speed of target and attacker, you could reduce the Teleportarium bonus by 2% or something, representing the difficulty in targeting the location they want.

Example: A raider streaking through the battle at 10 comes near a cruiser running at 5. If either tried to Teleport they would reduce their bonus from the Teleportarium by 10%. (10 - 5 = 5 * 2% = 10%).

It's not that much of a penalty, but it does soften the combo a bit. I like the idea because it brings more tactics into the combat. Pilot pulls the ship around and makes the piloting roll to reduce his speed. Gunner fires the salvo of macrobatteries to the targets voids. The commander gives the order to launch the assault.

Cifer said:

I think it will be a miraculous new communication technique. Ordinarily a 'signal lamp' , best quality versions come as a 'walkie talkie', and poor quality versions are 'smoke signals'. There is also an archaeotech upgrade called a 'cell phone', but both ships must be equipped with this relic of the Dark Age.